Building Customer Relationships in Eiger Flagship Store
The heart of successful business is how the business itself manages the customer relationship. You might have developed great products or services to cater the need for a specific market, but that does not automatically mean your business will be a success. Customers have significant impacts on how well your product or service sells since they will be the ones who care about what they are buying, how and where they buy it, and also, what happens after they made the purchases. According to the Gladly 2020 Customer Experience Report, 79% of customers say personalised service is more important than personalised marketing and 84% of customers go out of their way to spend more money with great experiences. This results in companies creating better interactions with customers.
For this article, we will go through the journey with Eiger, the lifestyle brand that specialises in outdoor activities. With the success of their first vending machine placement in their hometown, Bandung, they recently placed their second machine in the flagship store in Jakarta. What exactly makes them take this action? Let’s find out.
Benefits of having good customer relations
Customer relationship describes the engagement of how your brand engages with customers. The higher the level of customer engagement with your company and product, the better the customer relationships. This involves overcoming challenges that will ensure customer success.
Customer retention
Retention in business itself means that a customer can keep buying when they have a great experience in their initial visit. Eiger used to be known for their accessories on outdoor activities, such as gear shoes, carrier backpacks and many others. The same customer who bought the gear shoes and likes how the shoes can keep up with their hiking trip. With so, they can possibly return to the store to look for other products from Eiger, let’s say to match the whole collection so they can hike in style. Because they know they will get the same positive experience with the gear shoes, it makes them less hesitant to shop again.
Customer loyalty
Maintaining this great relationship with customers over time can make competitors have a hard time to change customers’ minds. Eiger has branches in other cities. Having a positive relationship with their customers meaning that they will likely come to find their stores with something in mind. Maybe a returning customer from Bandung needs a specific accessory for their cycling activity in Jakarta, and as a loyal customer they will look for another Eiger store because they know it will have the same satisfactory experience.
Customer satisfaction
When a customer is dissatisfied, they will not complain directly about the poor experience; they just simply don’t return to make another purchase. So it is hard to tell when customers are not happy with your business. With customer’s feedback can enable your company to solve issues and build trust.
This leads us to why customer experience is also as important as customer relations.
Why is customer experience important for business?
Also known as CX, customer experience is the result of every interaction a customer has with your business. Starting from navigating from the social media or website to talking to customer service and receiving the products they brought. The better experience customers have, the more repeat custom and positive reviews you'll receive, while simultaneously reducing the friction of customer complaints and returns. According to Esteban Kolsky from thinkJar Research, 55% of consumers will pay more for a guaranteed good experience.
How to build positive customer relationships?
Creating a business that is centred on the customers will get a better understanding of the purpose and role in the process of getting a successful customer relationship. Technically we are not an OG business blog, so we will summarise a few important keynotes you can take.
Accessibilities improvement
Make it easier for customers either to access your products or channel their way to communicate to you. As an example, you can add chatbots on your website for faster action that can provide information and guidance to help them find the answers they need. More than one-third of respondents in a Microsoft survey said that their biggest customer service issue is not being able to get help from service staff when needed. When everything is readily accessible, it makes it easier to browse around and leads to positive experiences, right?
Technology efficiency
These days, technology can help improve customer relations to manage a high volume of customers. Using a dedicated software like a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software, a company can track customer accounts and help increase satisfying experiences and interactions.
Eiger also utilises technology as a way to reach more customers with vending machines. As technology advances, a smart vending machine can also manage the inventory of the products. Smartven has a Cloud Management System, where everything related to what happens to your vending machine can be monitored. From inventories, sales reports, to choosing the time for a promotion. This technology surely will help to check which products are best-sellers, and to check successful or failed transactions. Even without accessing the machine in store, you can still check these reports remotely through a web dashboard.
Employee training
The interaction of your employees with customers also takes part in creating a great customer experience. Skill sets can vary from person to person across a company, so it is important to invest in training to make sure all employees have consistent knowledge. This can help in solving customer’s problems as well as extending the employee's soft skills.
Upon placing the vending machine, Eiger’s employees also received training from Smartven. This training helps them to utilise the machine to check the inventory report and to manage any transactions happening. With the employees being knowledgeable, it can further help should there be a problem when a customer buys something from the vending machine, or to make a strategy which next best-selling product can be sold. Within one month, the employees are able to learn fast on how to fully operate the vending machine.
Customers first
The Eiger vending machine is based on how the store can have an extension in selling their products to reach more customers even when it is not business hours. Most of the products in the vending machine are for people who are into cycling. So as an example, a customer needs a new pair of hand gloves during their morning biking on a Sunday. The store is not open yet at 7 am, so instead of waiting for another 3-4 hours, they can directly go to the vending machine to buy the new pair of hand gloves. Sounds like a great experience, right?
Supporting customers is a component to build meaningful relationships with the brand and the customer value. With the right customer relationship you can create consistency and trust that can last a lifetime.
If you have been thinking of getting a vending machine for your local business to support the customer experience better, you can click the button below and book a consultation with Smartven for further inquiries and prospects. You can also check our website and Instagram page for more information on Smartven. Stay healthy and see you soon!
